E 527 
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150lh.fl 
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ADDRESS 




SURVIVORS' ASSOCIATION 



ISOtli Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers. 



READ AT GETTYSBURG, SEPTEMBER 25th, 1896, 



BY 



BREVET-MAJOR R. L. ASHHURST. 

First Adjutant ok thi-; Regiment. 



Printed bv Ordek >h ijm Kxecutive Committee. 



PHILADELPHI.\: 
Printing House of Allen, Lane & Scott, 

1211-15 Clover St. and 229-11 S. Fifth St. 
1896. 



ADDRESS 



SURVIVORS' ASSOCIATION 



ISOtli Regiment, Pennsylvania A^ohinteers. 



READ AT GETTYSBURG, SEPTEMBER 25th, i 

BY 

BREVET-MAJOR R. L. ASHHURST, 

First Adjutant of the Rkgiment. 



Printed bv Order of the Executive Committee. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

1'rinting House of Allen, Lane & Scott, 

ijii-15 Clover St. and 2a9-3i S. Fifth St. 

1896. 






\^0 



ff \at. Soc. 



ADDRESS 

TO THK 

SURVIVORS 01- Till'. 150th RliCIMENT. 



HOW widely different are the circumstances under which 
we now meet, my comrades, from those which marked 
our first visit to the town of Gettysburg thirty-three years ago. 
We had spent the night of June 30th, as you will all remem- 
ber, at the little hamlet of State Line, just across the Maryland 
border. We knew we were nearing the enemy, and that a 
battle was certainly approaching ; but we little realized the 
terrible ordeal which the 1st of July, 1863, had in store for 
us. We spent the night peacefully, and started on our march 
northward leisurely enough on that W^cdnesda}' morning. It 
was not until after we had fairly started that the sound of the 
cannon broke upon our ears, and rumors of the commencing 
conflict began to meet us on our way. Then the cannon 
Sfrew louder and news came thick and fast. We heard of 
the first success and the capture of Archer's Brigade, and 
then, alas! of the gallant Reynolds' death. Our pace had 
quickened as the cannons' sound grew louder, and e'er long 
the order to double quick was given. Then, just before we 
reached this pretty town, lying white and peaceful in its green 
meadows, our course was turned to the left, .and leaving 
Gettysburg to the east of us we hastened forward o\er the 
hills and vales, where we passed many a gallant soldier 
stretched upon the ground for his last slumber, to the ridge 
or hill b}- Mcpherson's barn, which we were to make historic 
ground forever. Gett\-sburg itself we were not to pass 
through until, as the afternoon shadows grew long, the broken 
remnants of our gallant regiment, far more than decimated, 
since we had left between this old barn and the Seminary 
more than half our number killed or serioush" wounded, 

(3) 



struggled tlirough the streets of this little town, divided but 
undismayed, to form once more on the hills south of it, and 
to take that memorable position on Cemetery Ridge, from 
which no hostile attack could dislodge us. 

Now we come into this smiling v^alley as welcome guests, to 
partake again its now familiar hospitality, and visit each 
hallowed spot sacred by the effusion of patriot blood, and 
renew our memories of those awful and glorious days, which 
nature in its prodigal growth is doing its best to efface, and 
which but for the memorials set up by loving hands she 
would long since have hidden with her green mantle of 
oblivion. 

Now are our browes bound with victorious wreaths ; 
Our bruised armes hung up for monuments ; 
Our stern alarums changed to merry making ; 
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures ; 
Grim-visaged Mars hath smoothed his wrinkled front. 

These were the words that the immortal bard of Avon 
placed in the mouth of the Duke of Gloster, when the long 
civil wars of England had come to an end by the triumph 
of the white over the red rose, and the establishment on 
the throne of Edward IV., the representative of the House 
of York. 

Thirty-four )'ears have passed, m\- comrades, since our ten 
companies were gathered into a regiment at Harrisburg in the 
early Fall of 1862, and more than thirty years have elapsed 
since the smaller band of those who survived and still re- 
mained to hold up the flag of the 150th were mustered out 
of service at Elmira and dispersed to their homes to try 
to learn again the arts of peace. Thirty-four years have 
elapsed since many of us met each other for the first time, 
and began the acquaintance which was to develop into the 
comradeship which was to unite us in the dear bond of 
lasting friendship. While all sons of the dear old KeN'stone 
State, our different and contrasting origin showed what a 
Commonwealth and republic within itself Pennsylvania is. 
Mechanics, clerks, and students from the town and city, 
farmers from the fertile, rolling fields of the countr\- bor- 



dcring on the Great Lakes, and woodsmen from tlie nii<^hty 
forests of the North, we found ourselves brou^^lit together by 
the exigency of the time into the collocation of companies 
which ere long was to be welded by the might)- blows 
of the hammer of war into the indissoluble form of the 
150th Regiment. We were from the beginning inspired 
b>' the same hopes and motives. We had come to arms 
from the same patriotic impulse — the same devotion to our 
State and country, and to the immortal cause of liberty for 
which our Union was called into being, and with which it 
grew entwined from boyhood in our hearts. Three years, my 
comrades, limits the period of our life as soldiers. Within 
the brief compass of three years is comprised all that story 
of peril and adventure; of hope and despondenc)- ; of vic- 
tor}- and defeat; of toil, struggle, and privation; of well- 
earned rest, doubly enjo}'able as a respite from our fatigues ; 
and the renewed encounter of danger and suffering — cruel at 
the time to endure, yet now precious to look back upon, both 
in the thought of the triumph of the glorious cause for which 
the sorrow and suffering were undergone, and in the dear 
memory of the ties of love and friendship, cemented by the 
endurance in brave companionship of the same perils and 
hardships. As we look back upon those days, fellow sol- 
diers, it seems hard to realize the period of our service 
can ha\e been so brief, and that the time since then covers 
a period ten times as long. Those eventful years seem to 
have been the prime of our life, crowded with the inci- 
dents and events of march, camp, and battle ; while our later 
years seem, with all the more tedious struggle and labors of 
civil life, to have passed awa}- smoothh" and uneventfully in 
comi^arison. Thirty }cars ha\e passed since then — a time 
within which a new generation has arisen ; within which 
our sons and daughters have grown up to strong manhood 
and fair womanhood. A younger generation who have never 
hearkened to war's alarms or seen battle's magnificentl}- stern 
array ; who know the cannon only as it lumbers through 
the street in militar}' j^rocession. and the musket onh- as it 
glistens in the sunlight on parade, are now coming to the 



front — nay, already are there, and are taking upon them- 
selves the work of life and the conduct of affairs, and we begin 
to feel of ourselves that — 

Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage. 

Not only are the deeds of the period which fill so large a 
space in our memories being largely forgotten, but we find 
growing up around us a spirit which is impatient of any re- 
turn to the thoughts and feelings of those glorious days. In 
the rising generation are many who, when they hear and read 
of deeds of valor and heroism, cry out aii bono — for what 
good ? and who measure everything by the yardstick of 
profit. When any policy or course of conduct is urged as req- 
uisite to maintain the honor of the Republic or the public 
policy of our fathers ; when any stir of sympathy is felt for 
fellow Americans struggling for liberty close to our shores ; 
these so-called enlightened persons forthwith seek to find how 
it will affect the stock market, or influence the course of busi- 
ness ; and if it would appear that the course which far-seeing 
patriotism indicates, the preservation of America for free 
Americans, or the extension of a helping hand of sympathy 
to those, who longing to be free themselves, have dared to 
strike the blow, may depress trade or lower stocks, loud are 
the cries which arise against so-called jingoism, and we are ad- 
monished by these superior teachers against a bold or bully- 
ing disposition, and urged to walk along quietly and sub- 
missively and mind our own trade and shop, and leave all 
great questions and large policies to other nations. We are 
reminded of the horrors, and, above all, of the cost of war, 
and our sage critics point out to us that it would be cheaper 
to pay any damages or give up any claim than run the 
slightest risk of going to war about it. 

Comrades, when we hear these sapient views dinned in our 
cars does not our memory go back to the dark da}'s of Bu- 
chanan's time, in the early part of i86i ? Are not these 
teachings, now commended to us as the sum of human wis- 
dom, the very same cowardly counsels which seemed so likely 
to prevail over the impulse of patriotism and love of liberty 
in those perilous daws ? Have we forgotten the Northern 



men with Southern principles? Have we forgotten those 
who urged upon the Philadelphia merchant silence as to 
the cruel wrongs of slavery, lest we should lose Southern 
trade ? Does it not seem but as yesterday when we were 
urged to }-ield everything in compromise to the fierce and 
angry Southerner ; if he could but be prevailed on to forgive 
us and stay in the Union ; or, failing b>' submission to placate 
him, were advised to say to the seceding States, " Erring 
sisters, go in peace," without striking a blow to save and 
maintain the union of these American States, the most pre- 
cious bulwark of liberty in the known world ? 

Comrades, there was a time in those dark days of 1861 
when it seemed as if this cowardly, selfish policy were des- 
tined to prexail; when amid doubt, confusion, and treason 
we knew not whom to trust ; when by maladministration, the 
finances of the country had been brought to such a pass, 
that the United States had to pay twelve per cent, per an- 
num for money. When armies and fortifications were on 
every hand surrendered and abandoned by officers trained 
by the nation's schools, and the Northern arsenals were 
stripped to supply intending rebellion with the munitions 

of war. 

Which of us does not i*emember that period of doubt 
and discouragement? And how did it end? Not by the 
careful counter teaching of wiser and better and more cour- 
ageous counsellors, though all honor to those brave teach- 
ers who bravel)' upheld through that gloomy time the cause 
of eternal right and deathless libert}-. But in a moment, in 
the twinkling of an eye, all was changed ; the plain people 
of the country awoke, and with that sublime instinct which 
in great crises illuminates the ordinarily slow minds of plain 
men, they felt and knew that this was all wrong, that there 
was but one course for the salvation of the nation, and that, 
the brave and direct one of fighting to the death for libert)' 
and union, one and inseparable. The>- realized in an instant 
that to reckon of profit or loss in such an emergenc>- was the 
wildest folly. 

The Scriptures say: " What shall it profit a man if he gain 



the whole world and lose his own soul ? " the people real 
ized what would all trade and business gains profit us, if we 
lost our united country ; if we ceased to be Americans and 
were broken into groups of divided States ; and, on the other 
hand, what other loss of property or of life itself would count 
in the scale, if we could save and hand down from sire to 
son citizenship in this great united free American republic ? 

The first shot fired at Sumter cleared the air of the murky 
fogs of cowardly and selfish policy, and the great Northern 
people arose, inspired and enlightened by the divine impulse 
of patriotic pride. The flag, the immortal Stars and Stripes, 
which had been but a thing of light estimation to many, 
shone out in the heavens as a beacon light ; and we fol- 
lowed it to toil, suffering, sickness, wounds, and death, 
eagerly and without reluctance, and through and past all 
those ills, and the multitudinous woes of Avar, to victory and 
the re-establishment on a firmer foundation than ever of our 
broad Union. 

Were we all wrong? Was the game not worth the can- 
dle ? Was the loss of property and waste of force and 
energy, the suffering and pain endured by countless thou- 
sands, the destruction of so many precious lives, compensated, 
and more than compensated, as we have always thought and 
proudly believed, by the splendid results obtained ; or would 
we have done better each to have pursued his own little 
narrow pathway in life and done the work which lay before 
him, married his wife and brought up his children without re- 
gard to whether he belonged to a great, free nation, the hope 
of liberty for the world, or not ? Was our sacrifice vain ? 
Viewed merely from a prosaic and selfish point of view we did 
make great sacrifices. Apart from toil and suffering, apart 
from the suffering of the protracted march, the distress of heat, 
and wet and cold, the pain of the wound, and the anguish of 
fever, sacrifices individual to every soldier which his body must 
remember; there were the pangs of separation from loved ones 
endured by ourselves in the field, and in yet greater degree by 
those we had left at home. There was also a great pecuniary 
sacrifice — when at the critical aee of manhood we absented 



ourselves from the marts of trade and industry, leaving to 
those who staid at home the opportunity of seizing cv^ery 
advantage in the race for successful business life ; so that 
when we returned to the walks of peace we found the best 
places already occupied, and learned by experience that, de- 
spite the loudly expressed gratitude to the soldier, we had 
before us an up-hill struggle for the chance of even mak- 
ing a living in civil life. Then many of us came back 
maimed and crippled, and we left behind us on hill and plain, 
in swamp and forest, many who never returned. The sac- 
rifice was enormous, the suffering intense to the individual, 
and when attempted to be realized in the mass, inconceiv- 
able. And our antagonists, our gallant Southem brethren 
who met us on this field and on so many other fair plains 
and green hills, and in so many shady woodlands, and by 
so many a lonely river to be dyed with both our bloods; 
they and theirs suffered, and deeply suffered, too. They 
fought, as we believe, in a bad cause, the success of which 
would have been disastrous for human freedom, but they 
fought nobly, in a firm conviction of its rightfulness, and 
with splendid disregard of the sacrifice entailed on them- 
selves and those dear to them. Has all this gone for 
naught, and are the country and the people only that much 
the poorer for the precious blood spilt, the salt tears shed, 
and the wealth consumed and destro}'ed? 

If we were to believe some of our teachers of to-day, such 
is the case. In a recent glowing and picturesque storj', 
familiar to many of you, "The Red Badge of Courage," 
we have a most vivid and intense picture of the soldier's 
toils, sorrows, perils, and sufferings — we are put in his 
place to feel all he underwent, his agonies of fear and shame, 
but not a word is told us of the great and glorious ob- 
ject of the sacrifice, nor of the noble glow of true patriotic 
fervor which, as we know, was the governing note and tone 
of the chords of the soldier's heart, and without which the 
stor)' of the American soldier's deeds and cndurings is but as 
a tale told by an idiot — full of sound and fury, signifying 
nothing. On the contrary, if we knew not better we would 



lO 

arise from its perusal with the feeling that nothing could 
justify or compensate the horror and suffering undergone. 

Other novels and stories and dramas with which literature 
abounds at this time tell us of many of the incidents of the 
war time, and describe to us the course of man's life and love 
running through that period, and of the warp and woof of 
human feeling and character in those days ; and tell us, too, 
the harrowing tale of loss and suffering and death, which they 
often paint as unnecessary and useless. How few of them 
speak of the lofty ends and sublime purpose, of the devotion 
and sacrifice called out, or of the ennobling of personal life and 
character as well as national, by and through that sacrifice. 
And yet, my comrades, we feel and know that we did not even 
for ourselves and our own natures fight and suffer in vain. 
Apart from the sublime achievement of the preservation of our 
Union and an united free America for ourselves and our pos- 
terity, our labors were not, we feel, fruitless to ourselves or to 
the development of our own characters ; and even our South- 
ern brethren, then our gallant foes, who mistakenly fought 
so superbly in a bad cause — happily a lost one — though they 
fought in vain as to success, yet their gallant, earnest struggle 
for a purpose and end they believed just and noble was not 
unrewarded, in the development, through sacrifice, of a noble 
type of manhood in themselves. 

I have read to you in the beginning of this address some 
lines from Shakespeare, contrasting the period of peace with 
that of the bloody war then lately ended in its physical aspects. 
Let me read you now some verses by England's late laureate, 
Alfred Tennyson, written in 1854, when the long period of 
peace which had settled down vipon Europe after the termina- 
tion of the Napoleonic wars was at last broken, and men 
again put aside the plough and the reaping hook for the 
musket and the sword : — 

It was but a dream, yet it lightened my despair 
When I thought that a war would arise in defense of the right ; 

That an iron tyranny now should bend or cease, 
The glory of manhood stand on his ancient height. 

Nor Britain's one sole God be the millionaire ; 
No more shall commerce be all in all, and peace 



II 

Pipe on her pastoral hillock a languid note, 
And watch her harvest ripen, her herd increase, 

Nor the cannon bullet rust on the slothful shore. 
And the cobweb woven across the cannon's throat 

Shall shake its threaded tiers in the wind no more. 
Let it go or stay, so I wake to the higher aims 

Of a land that has lost for a little her lust of gold. 

* ******** 

And hail once more to the banner of battle unroll'd, 
Tho' many a ligiit shall darken and many shall weep 

For those that are crush'd in the clash of jarring claims, 
Yet God's just doom shall be wreaked * * * 

And noble thought be freer under the sun, 
And the heart of a people beat with one desire, 

For the long, long canker of peace is over and done. 

The poet, in his prophetic vision, saw good, not ill, to come 
out of war with all its suffering and sacrifice, and looked, as 
we see, to war to remedy the ills of the canker of peace : that 
is, the decay and corruption of the character of the nation by 
reason of the self-indulgence and lust of mere material per- 
sonal gain and enjoyment — which the laureate deemed the 
consequence of this long devotion of the people of England 
to the accumulation of wealth and attainment of pleasure, each 
for himself, during those thirty years while the drum and 
cannon were silent. 

The ills and horrors of war all can sec ; it needs no prophet 
or poet to point them out or make them real to us. The dan- 
gers of peace, on the other hand, are more subtle, and it re- 
quires the flash of the true poet's genius to bring them before 
us and make us realize they are not blessings and good things. 
Let us then, comrades, in the ligiit of the poet's inspiration, 
as well as in that of our own limited experience, consider what 
are these treacherous dangers of peace to personal and na- 
tional character, and why it is that war with all its terrors ma}- 
yet, like Winter's frosts, be beneficent in the destruction of 
germs of disease which, if unchecked, might work a moral 
destruction as compared with which the direst effects of war 
are but kindly and wholesome surger}-. 

Perhaps the first and most immediatel}' striking effect of the 
change from the way men act and feel in time of peace to 



12 

their sentiments and conduct in the days which try men's 
souls, is in the unity, the soHdarity of fcehng which arises when 
a great cause stirs into activity the blood of the most torpid, 
and we suddenly feel ourselves, instead of mere isolated units, 
members of a great being, knit together by a common pa- 
triotism. As Tennyson said, in the lines above quoted, war 
makes in a moment "the heart of a people beat with one 
desire." 

In peace individualism predominates. It is every one for 
himself and the devil take the hindmost. We know what 
that means in war. As soon as the mere individual is thought 
of and considered, the army becomes a mob. The first stage 
of discipline is to curb and restrain the fierce individual 
movement, and to teach man that he is powerless by him- 
self, and that his strength is in unity ; the effacement of 
the individual in the company, the regiment, the brigade, 
until the whole army becomes a splendid unit, capable of 
that combined and sustained action which can alone bring 
victory to its country's banners. Therefore while the essence 
of a serious and noble war is unity of feeling among the 
nation in its patriotic support, its success must spring from 
the united action of its citizen soldiery who learn to stand 
shoulder to shoulder, and to move as one man in their 
country's cause. In every way we view it, my comrades, 
we see in this thought of unity the permeating principle of 
military life as it should be. How lost and separate each 
of us felt when we first assembled round our flag. How in- 
valuable were the days when each man learned to know and 
rely upon the comrade who stood beside him. As the days 
went by and the overwrought individualism of our modern 
civilization gave way by degrees to the welding force of disci- 
pline, how we grew to feel ourselves one, and our pride and 
confidence grew and strengthened, not in our individual selves, 
but in the splendid organization of which we formed a part — 
the 150th Pennsylvania Volunteers. And from that day to 
this, my comrades, what unity has there been in our lives 
like military unity? What friendship like that of comrades 
tried and found true amid perils and privations which the 



^3 

peaceful life dreams not of? Although our soldiering was 
scant three years, and though more than ten times three- 
have since rolled by. have we found in that longer period 
since, friendships or alliances which can take the place of 
those cemented in our army days, and now, alas, becoming 
fewer year by year, as one comrade after another steps from 
life's ranks at death's imperious summons ? P^ven since our 
last reunion on this historic field how many names of our 
comrades have been dropped from the muster roll ! As I 
write I recall those of Gimber, Gutelius, Williams, Yocum^ 
and O'Conor. Friends many and true have we made in 
these thirty years of peace, but can we in our heart of 
hearts feel that they are the same to us as the comrade 
who walked beside us on the march, when mile added 
to mile seemed to tax human endurance to the utmost; 
beside whom we la}' under the canopy of heaven, or per- 
haps sheltered by the same blanket f/om the storm, and 
who stood shoulder to shoulder with us on the day of 
battle ; who sometimes helped us, and sometimes sought 
not in vain our assistance, when wounds and sickness over- 
powered him ? No association however intimate in the life 
of peaceful industry can make such friendship as grows 
under the tent and to the music of the cannon. 

The military virtues which we are considering are nearly 
connected ; and the habit of obedience lies close to the re- 
pression of that undue development of the individual which 
is one of the vices of modern life. Obedience, the repression 
of the fierce individual will, the habit of readily obeying lawful 
authority, of giving up for the time the right even of using 
our own judgment and accepting without question that of our 
commanding officer, is an element of the first importance in 
building up the soldier's character. It lies at the root of dis- 
cipline, and he who would command must learn how to obey. 
Early civilization has sprung from obedience, and one of the 
first steps in putting off mere savager} and ascending in the 
social scale to the condition even of the barbarian, is when 
man learns to subdue the fiery impulses of his savage nature 
enough to accept the command of a superior, and to submit to 



the bonds of discipline and training to win victory from the 
common foe. 

In thus praising discipHne and obedience, let me not be un- 
derstood as for a moment undervaluing freedom, or confusing 
the base submission of the serf with the voluntary and proud 
obedience of the soldier. No two things can be further 
apart. The obedience I speak of is the voluntary, conscious 
submission of the freeman to the yoke of authority for the 
accomplishment of a great purpose, with no trace in it of 
the element of fear or servility. History shows us that 
never has there been such superb discipline, never has the 
spirit of obedience, unit)-, and order produced such great re- 
sults as with bodies of intelligent freemen. Where was there 
a more superb instance of discipline than in the three hundred 
Spartan freemen who, moving to the sound of flutes and soft 
recorders, died to the last man in the pass of Thermopylae? 
Where could be found more splendid specimens of free man- 
hood than the ten thousand Greeks who, after the defeat and 
death of Cyrus, whom they had come to support, on the plains 
of Mesopotamia, cut their way through army after army, 
crossed one mountain range after another, and many an un- 
fordable river, maintaining an equally bold front to the savage 
nations who tried to intercept their retreat and to the pursuing 
Persian hosts seeking to overwhelm them, until at last they 
emerged, wearied and decimated, but unconquered, on the 
Klack Sea ? In the wonderfully disciplined force of Hanni- 
bal, the greatest general of antiquity, his Spanish mercen- 
aries were of splendid merit, but his best and finest force, 
on whom in the ultimate emergency he placed his reliance, 
was the flower of the youth of Carthage, who followed his 
standard for patriotism, not for silver. In more modern 
times what are the most remarkable instances of the tri- 
umph of discipline and obedience ? At once arises in our 
memory the picture of the army of Swedes and North Ger- 
mans, an arm}' of stern, sober, conscientious men, with which 
Gustavus Adolphus, the hero of the North, broke to pieces 
the mercenary hosts of Tilly and Wallenstein, until then, 
with their alternations of partial discipline and fierce license, 



15 

regarded as the most formidable forces in Europe ; or, turn- 
ing to England, we think of the regiments of Puritans and 
Independents whom Cromwell, after the self-denj-ing ordi- 
nance, organized from the previousl\- uncertain train bands 
of the Roundheads — an arnn- against which the ca\aliers of 
Prince Rupert dashed themselves in vain, and which stood like 
an unassailable rock against every foreign and domestic storm. 
Let us take an instance of to-da}-. l^ut a few 3-ears ago the 
Egyptian, emasculated by centuries of oppression, caring little 
whether he died by the sword or under the lash of his task- 
master, was called upon to encounter the. fierce Arabs of the 
desert following the standard of the Mahdi. He had hardly 
courage to flee, but lay down to submit to death at the hands 
of his enemy. What do we see now, after barely a generation 
of just rule in Egypt, and the training of the Egyptian soldiery 
under English officers? The same Egj'ptian, under General 
Kitchener, at Firket meets face to face, and overcomes the 
foe, whom fifteen years ago he had not courage to resist. In 
modern civil life, comrades, the need of obedience is not often 
apparent to us ; each of us is able to go his own wa)- and fol- 
low the course dictated by his interest or pleasure, without 
immediate or irreparable disaster being apparent as the result 
of liberty carried to license. It is only in some emergency, 
or catastrophe in the course of our usually smooth exist- 
ence, when tempest, fire, flood, or shipwreck breaks down 
the usual protections of society in modern life, that we see 
how helpless the disunited efforts of indix'idual man are, and 
how help and protection must be found in united and disci- 
plined action, based on obedience to some competent guide or 
leader. But these emergencies, happih-. are comparatix'ely so 
rare that man}- ma}' go through a peaceful life without meet- 
ing one, and when they come they are apt to find men with 
their character as well as their muscles, flabb}- and untrained 
for the exigence of the time. In the shipwreck, when men are 
crowding into boats, perhaps too few for all, and the loss of 
those few is threatened by the struggle, what salvation is there, 
unless there be present, discipline as well as native courage — 
men trained both to command and to obe\- ? Therefore, 



r6 

comrades, can we not say that history and experience teach 
that tlie lessons of disciphne and obedience which we learn 
as nowhere else in the stern school of war, are teachings 
well worth a great sacrifice ? 

What shall I next speak of, my feomrades ? The education 
of the quality of valor — courage, that distinguishing manly 
quality without which character, however beautiful otherAvise^ 
is weak and contemptible, and which, in its superb development,, 
so lights up a character as to make us look with admiration 
even at one who deserves the name of villain. Their splendid 
valor and gallant death makes us look with admiration even at 
a Richard the Third or a Macbeth, a Cortez or a Pizarro, de- 
spite their crimes. It is often said that courage is a natural 
quality which one man possesses and another lacks, and that 
no education or development is needed for it ; but history 
and experience, I think, teach us otherwise, and that for the 
greater number of mankind this is not the case. There are 
many splendid cases, and I am glad to say I have seen not a 
few of them among the ranks of our beloved regiment, of 
men who seem not to know what fear is, whom danger does 
but stimulate, and peril delight, — natural-born soldiers, whose 
valor needs restraint rather than development. But I think 
we must all agree that this is hardly the common and usual 
case, among men brought up among the conditions of 
modern life ; whatever it may have been in earlier days, when 
every man had to look to his good sword and strong right 
arm for the protection of his family from wrong and insult 
and his property from spoliation. In these days, when we 
rightly trust to the law and the police for the protection of 
our lives and homes, there is danger that the courage of our 
hearts as well as the muscles of our arms may be atrophied 
for want of use. Whatever may be a man's native courage, 
he cannot surely know whether or not he be brave until 
he has been tried, and therefore cannot have the confidence in 
his own courage without which the good effect of his valor 
may be half lost. The man who fears perhaps he may be 
frightened when danger comes, is half lost ahead}-, although 
a splendid wave of courage ma}' redeem him, when the peril is 



present. The habit of courageous action can be developed 
even in a man nervous and timid at the start, and he may 
learn he possesses valor from the fact that he finds he can 
force himself to act bravely. Courage, too, is contagious, and 
the magnetic touch of elbow of soldier to soldier, and the 
valorous atmosphere around him ma}' inspire even the timid 
and weak with the spirit of the soldier. I am speaking now, 
be it understood, of men who have a true, brave nature es- 
. sentiall}', which, although liable to fear from lack of habit of 
danger, or from physical or nervous infirmity, may be devel- 
oped and educated into cool and deliberate courage. 

And probably this may be justh- concluded to be the 
natural condition of most men who in civil life have never 
had an occasion of testing their bravery or steadfastness, 
and who up to the last moment before the ordeal of battle, 
may in their heart of hearts have entertained a doubt as to 
how they would meet the crisis when it came. To these the 
discipline of war, the magnificent example of the old and 
tried soldier, or of the fortunate natural hero b)' nature a 
stranger to fear, is a noble education, and when the essence 
of the nature is sound and the heart true, this instruction 
rarely fails to develop and confirm the manly virtues, and 
perfect the character with a full reliance on its own courage. 
It only can fail in the few cases where the fibre of the moral 
character is too feeble to endure and profit b}- the discip- 
hne of the soldier's life. I speak not here of cowards, prop- 
erly so-called; such were few and far between among the 
volunteers whom the call of patriotism drew to their countrj^'s 
banner in the early years of the war. There was little temp- 
tation for such to seek enlistment in those days, though the 
case may have been different in the later period of the draft, 
and of huge bounties. There is alwa}-s a residuum in every 
nation, even in ours, of such men, whom no incentixe of 
honor, shame, or feeling can make into soldiers. True cow- 
ardice, in my judgment, is not ver}- far remo\cd trom that 
excessive individualism of which I spoke awhile since, and 
perhaps is the ultimate result of it ; that is, it is based on 
egotism and selfishness. The man truK' and absolutely self- 



i8 

ish and cold of heart, to whom his own ease, comfort, and 
prosperity, is far more than honor, or the welfare of friends 
and countr)', can logicalh' hardly be anything but a coward; 
though by the strange complexity of human nature he may 
sometimes be endowed with a recklessness of danger to which 
his nature has not true claim, and then is apt to become a 
dangerous wild beast in the community. 

The old saying of Satan in the book of Job, " Whatever a 
man hath will he give for his life," was a hasty and crude gen-* 
eralization, proved untrue in many an instance. The Chinese 
will sell his life to support his family. In the olden days many 
a man endured \\\^ peine forte et dure, with weight after weight 
piled upon him until he died, rather than plead, in order to 
save his estate from confiscation, and transmit it to his heirs. 
The martyr and patriot have shown on the scaffold and at the 
stake that they willingly surrendered life rather than betray 
religion, honor, or loyalty. The patriot soldier every day 
stood ready to risk life for the preservation of his country's 
liberty and laws ; but the saying is true of the class of men of 
whom I speak, and such have no place among a patriot soldiery. 
Such a man, the true coward, may indeed fight desperately to 
save his own life in an .extremity, like a rat in a corner. He 
may even learn by experience that in many cases it is as safe 
to advance as to run away, since bullets are just as fatal when 
entering from behind ; but he can nev^er become a true soldier. 
His disease being of the heart, not of the mind or the nerves, 
cannot be eradicated or cured, and at any time the true in- 
grained selfishness of his nature may, on a favorable oppor- 
tunity, assert itself and bring ruin to the army and the cause. 
And this thought brings me to what I deem the true and 
complete crown of the soldier's character as developed by the 
stern discipline of warlike life — it is unselfishness — the abro- 
gation of self; the devotion of life and all that makes life dear 
to countr}' and nation in the first and highest place, and sec- 
ondarily to the army, the regiment, the company, the comrade. 
Our great Exemplar saj's : " Greater love hath no man than 
this, that he lay down his life for his friends." The first prin- 
ciple of the volunteer soldier's course, the very reason why he. 



19 

laid aside the peaceful implements of his trade or husbandry, 
was the conviction and realization that he was ready and willing 
to lay down his life for his friends, for his country, the aggre- 
gate and sum of those he loved, and whose prosperity and 
unity were what made the life, the home, the family what 
they are and have been in our beloved nation. 

Therefore, in the very beginning the true soldier undertakes 
to lay aside egotism, selfishness, and self-seeking, to curb the 
rampant individualism of our day, and to seek the good of 
others, of the great mass of his friends and brethren ; not in 
the fierce pride of individual effort, but with patience, temper- 
ance, obedience, and steadfast courage, as one unit in the great 
body of which he is proud to be a part — the patriot army. 
Even had the end before us been less noble and imperative, 
even had our success in preserving the Union and the liberty 
handed down to us by our sires been less complete, who can 
dare to say that we fought and bled and suffered in vain ? The 
struggle and the endurance, even apart from the achievement, 
brought to the soldier, and to the nation of which he was a 
part, its great reward in the development of character, in purg- 
ing from the body of the people, as through fire, the gross ele- 
ments of egotism, self-seeking, and corruption ; and bringing 
out of the crucible of toil and suffering the t}'pe of perfected 
manhood — the patriot soldier — patient, true, enduring, obe- 
dient, valiant, and merciful — of \\hich our noble volunteer 
army afforded so many splendid examples. 

Comrades, our fighting days are almost over; we are all now 
beyond the age when we could enlist under our countr}-'s 
banner, save under some terrible emergenc)- which called on 
every veteran to fire one shot more before surrendering his 
life for his country. 

If again a new danger, whether foreign or domestic, from 
without or within, to our countr\''s unity or life, or to the na- 
tion's honor or honesty threatens, God grant that a new 
generation of our sons will be found ready and anxious to go 
forth at the call of dut\- and rail}' to the flag of their countr)- 
with the single-hearted devotion and \alor of the volunteers 
of thirty }-ears ago. 



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